D.C. needs to get a lot more car friendly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the subway is going to be unusable, and everyone is fine with that, then we need to accommodate people where they are -- in cars.

There are going to be far more people on the roads and that means we need a lot more parking, more emphasis on easing traffic, etc. Ridership on the subway is down 75 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

I didnt used to drive all that much, but now with the subway basically in moth balls, I drive everywhere.

Instead we pour all our resources into bike lanes that almost no one even uses.

wrong, DC has one of the highest rates of bike commuters in the entire country. when everyone was actually into offices, up to 6% of daily commuters were using bikes. that is sginificant.

Ha. What a phony baloney stat. It's probably more like six-tenths of one percent of commuters use bikes. You don't have to take my word for it. Go stand on any street corner in D.C. and count the number of people who pass you by on bikes vs. cars & buses.

[Anonymous]

Are there any bike lanes at all in Wards 7 or 8?

It's almost like bike lanes are the whitest things ever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the subway is going to be unusable, and everyone is fine with that, then we need to accommodate people where they are -- in cars.

There are going to be far more people on the roads and that means we need a lot more parking, more emphasis on easing traffic, etc. Ridership on the subway is down 75 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

I didnt used to drive all that much, but now with the subway basically in moth balls, I drive everywhere.

Instead we pour all our resources into bike lanes that almost no one even uses.

wrong, DC has one of the highest rates of bike commuters in the entire country. when everyone was actually into offices, up to 6% of daily commuters were using bikes. that is sginificant.

Is it significant though? My understanding was it was closer to 4%. Whatever it is though, if these people were mostly otherwise walking or using transit, it is effectively irrelevant and not significant. If they mostly came out of cars, then it may mean something, but still a war over very small numbers.

Also, we have to consider peak demand rather than average. How many of these people were bike commuting in non-ideal weather... the cold, the rainy, the hot and humid, etc.? If very few, then again, what is the actual value of that 4% to 6% number from an infrastructure design perspective?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are there any bike lanes at all in Wards 7 or 8?

It's almost like bike lanes are the whitest things ever.

Crazy Trayvon actively opposes bike lanes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there any bike lanes at all in Wards 7 or 8?

It's almost like bike lanes are the whitest things ever.

Crazy Trayvon actively opposes bike lanes.

And yet somehow GGWash endorsed him in one of the most intellectually fraudulent pieces of writing I've ever seen on a site that specializes in intellectual fraud:

https://ggwash.org/view/77510/dc-endorsements

Take away the fact that he has killed all plans for bike lanes in Ward 8 -- the DDOT chief recently admitted this -- but his anti-Semitism and anti-vaccine stances should be immediately disqualifying.

[Anonymous]

"Let's make massive infrastructure changes that will change the face of the city for decades in exactly the opposite direction every city planner since the 1970s has been telling us to go, all because I don't want to wait 20 minutes for a train because of an issue that will be fixed in a few months."

Great idea...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Let's make massive infrastructure changes that will change the face of the city for decades in exactly the opposite direction every city planner since the 1970s has been telling us to go, all because I don't want to wait 20 minutes for a train because of an issue that will be fixed in a few months."

Great idea...

Are you new to the area? Are you familiar with metro's track record (ha!) for safety and reliability over the last 10-15 years? I regret to inform you that the reliability issues will NOT be fixed anytime soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there any bike lanes at all in Wards 7 or 8?

It's almost like bike lanes are the whitest things ever.

Crazy Trayvon actively opposes bike lanes.

And yet somehow GGWash endorsed him in one of the most intellectually fraudulent pieces of writing I've ever seen on a site that specializes in intellectual fraud:

https://ggwash.org/view/77510/dc-endorsements

Take away the fact that he has killed all plans for bike lanes in Ward 8 -- the DDOT chief recently admitted this -- but his anti-Semitism and anti-vaccine stances should be immediately disqualifying.

Developer-funded organization supporting developer-funded politician.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we should do the opposite. Discourage car use. I am serious.

100% agree
-- bike commuter

+1 also agree. Commuter tax to fund and improve Metro!

Absolutely. Along with cutting off all but non-emergency/non-disabled private cars on downtown arteries, a la Slow Streets in San Francisco.

That's insane. Half the bars and restaurants and stores in Washington would close. Cities need people to circulate. If you make traffic impossible and the subway unusable, people will stop moving around. That's what happened in San Francisco. Museums there are worried there are going to have to close because no one uses Slow Streets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/arts/design/san-francisco-bikes-cars-museum.html

It’s quite fascinating how impervious their ideas are to basic foundations of economics and thanks for pointing it out.

I don't think they should go to the extreme that the PP mentions but I also disagree that it would destroy cities.
A lot of European cities have been restricting car traffic to the city center for decades yet still manage to do just fine.

Europe is an interesting example, because GDP growth has lagged the US for my entire lifetime and I’m over 50. Meanwhile, European wages are laughable and the consumer durable goods, like washing machines, are expensive and a joke. Furthermore, the growth centers of most European cities are usually the car friendly suburbs where you have the highways and big box stores and glass office buildings, kinda like the United States. In a lot of second and third tier European cities, the older and central areas that are not as car friendly will be the areas where you find a lot of immigrants, as well as in the poor suburbs.

[Anonymous]

In about 5 years many of these bike lanes are going to be removed. Maybe sooner.

The wealthy, middle aged white guy bike lobby might be privileged. But they are not as powerful as commercial property owners.

[Anonymous]

Our nation’s capital city should be mass transit and cycling only. Except for permitted deliveries of course.

We should set an example for the rest of the world.

I’m not even a cyclist, because it’s just too dangerous with cars on the road. But I cycle in European cities where it’s safer without cars there.

So much better for the environment!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the subway is going to be unusable, and everyone is fine with that, then we need to accommodate people where they are -- in cars.

There are going to be far more people on the roads and that means we need a lot more parking, more emphasis on easing traffic, etc. Ridership on the subway is down 75 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

I didnt used to drive all that much, but now with the subway basically in moth balls, I drive everywhere.

Instead we pour all our resources into bike lanes that almost no one even uses.

wrong, DC has one of the highest rates of bike commuters in the entire country. when everyone was actually into offices, up to 6% of daily commuters were using bikes. that is sginificant.

Is it significant though? My understanding was it was closer to 4%. Whatever it is though, if these people were mostly otherwise walking or using transit, it is effectively irrelevant and not significant. If they mostly came out of cars, then it may mean something, but still a war over very small numbers.

Also, we have to consider peak demand rather than average. How many of these people were bike commuting in non-ideal weather... the cold, the rainy, the hot and humid, etc.? If very few, then again, what is the actual value of that 4% to 6% number from an infrastructure design perspective?

According to “induced demand”, those cars would be replaced by other cars. There is no net loss of cars, except if capacity is reduced. And those people don’t just magically disappear. They move to Tysons and take their jobs with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the subway is going to be unusable, and everyone is fine with that, then we need to accommodate people where they are -- in cars.

There are going to be far more people on the roads and that means we need a lot more parking, more emphasis on easing traffic, etc. Ridership on the subway is down 75 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

I didnt used to drive all that much, but now with the subway basically in moth balls, I drive everywhere.

the only way to ease traffic in a compact city is to make driving harder not easier, We can't expand the DC road network.

Obviously, that's completely wrong. Traffic would be a lot better if the subway was a viable alternative. We could also tear out a lot of these bike lanes that barely anyone uses and turn them over to cars.

They really should tear out the bike lanes and then them into trolley bus lanes. Much better use if public resources.

[Anonymous]

The premise of a lot of cycling people is that there is pent up demand of people who want to bicycle but who don’t because they feel unsafe.

What if people just don’t like riding bicycles? It’s seems like an impossible thing for these pro-bike people to fathom.

One of the most supposedly most successful bike paths in the country is the CCT. Even on its best days of the year it’s a fraction of one lane of average daily traffic volume on any basic arterial road. The other successful bike in the city, the 15th Street cycletrack, on peak days does not even replace 25% of the average daily traffic volume of the one lane that it replaced. Meanwhile, cyclist complain that they feel unsafe because the two way traffic is too narrow and they are lobbying to widen it.

The fact is, even successful bicycle infrastructure is extremely inefficient and wasteful use of public resources in doing the thing that transportation infrastructure is supposed to do, move people around quickly.

Sooner or later smart cities will come to this conclusion too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The premise of a lot of cycling people is that there is pent up demand of people who want to bicycle but who don’t because they feel unsafe.

What if people just don’t like riding bicycles? It’s seems like an impossible thing for these pro-bike people to fathom.

One of the most supposedly most successful bike paths in the country is the CCT. Even on its best days of the year it’s a fraction of one lane of average daily traffic volume on any basic arterial road. The other successful bike in the city, the 15th Street cycletrack, on peak days does not even replace 25% of the average daily traffic volume of the one lane that it replaced. Meanwhile, cyclist complain that they feel unsafe because the two way traffic is too narrow and they are lobbying to widen it.

The fact is, even successful bicycle infrastructure is extremely inefficient and wasteful use of public resources in doing the thing that transportation infrastructure is supposed to do, move people around quickly.

Sooner or later smart cities will come to this conclusion too.

Argument made about cycling but even if you remove every bike lane in the city, you won’t get much more car space (and will get the hardcore cyclists taking up an entire car lane and slowing things down even more). So what is your solution? Fund/fix metro? Kick out all the people to widen roads? No parking? Tons of parking under the mall?